At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason. (A website by Trevor Grant Thomas designed to inform the world from a Christian conservative worldview, and to make new and better disciples of Jesus Christ.)
The ultimate question for us all: What shall I do with Jesus? (Matt. 27:22)

Friday, September 21, 2012

What Libertarians (Like John Stossel) Get Wrong

John Stossel’s recent
column, “There Ought Not to Be a Law” reveals many of the shortcomings when
it comes to Libertarian orthodoxy. Stossel begins by proposing a false
dichotomy. He declares that he is a libertarian because he sees “a false choice offered by the political left and right:
government control of the economy -- or government control of our personal
lives.”

Denigrating both the right and the left, Stossel declares, “The
left thinks government can lessen income inequality. The right thinks
government can make Americans more virtuous. I say we’re best off if neither
side attempts to advance its agenda via government.”

A common charge leveled against conservatives is that,
through our “social agenda” we are “legislating morality,” or attempting to
“make Americans more virtuous” as Stossel puts it. While it is true that
conservatives are “legislating morality,”—because every law is rooted in some morality—no sound-thinking conservative
believes that we can legislate our fellow citizens into a virtuous lifestyle. That
has never been the aim of conservatism.

However, what is a
part of conservatism is the fact that religion is an indispensible pillar of
liberty. Of course, as far as religions go, in the United States of America, the Christian
religion has by far been the most influential. It has been this way from our
founding.

Touring the young United States to discover why the
representative democracy present in America was so successful here while
failing in so many other places, French social philosopher Alexis de
Tocqueville declared that, “the religious aspect of the country was the first
thing that struck my attention.”

Noting the direct influence of religion upon politics in
America, de Tocqueville concluded that “In the United States the sovereign
authority is religious…there is no country in the whole world in which the
Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in
America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of its
conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt
over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth…The Americans combine
the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that
it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.”

For most modern conservatives, it is still impossible to
“conceive the one without the other.” Most of today’s conservatives also
understand well that the influence Christianity has had in America is by no means an accident.
America’s
“Schoolmaster” Noah Webster bears this out in his 1832 History of the United States when he wrote that “our citizens
should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican
principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament or the Christian
religion.” Webster added, “The religion which has introduced civil liberty is
the religion of Christ and His apostles…to this we owe our free Constitutions
of Government.”

In other words, the liberty that libertarians love in America is
implicitly linked to Christianity. Certainly our Constitution would not exist
without it. Having legislation that reflects Christian morality is no detriment
to liberty.

The true threat to liberty is the godlessness that is pervasive
in today’s liberalism, which has, of course, taken over the Democratic Party. With
its devotion to killing children in the womb, removing prayer, the
Commandments, and the Bible from the public arena, and its support of sexual
immorality and the redefinition of marriage, I always knew that the Democratic
Party was the party of the godless. The recent Democratic National Convention
just confirmed this.

Revealing the true nature of modern liberalism, the DNC
removed a reference to God in the party platform, along with a reference to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. After conservatives pointed
this out to Americans, embarrassed Democrat party leaders were forced to take
action. On Wednesday of their convention, an amendment was proposed to reinsert
God and Jerusalem
into the platform. The ensuing voice vote was an even greater embarrassment.

Amidst boos, jeers, and raised fists, Los Angeles Mayor and
convention chairman Antonio Villaraigosa had to take three voice votes before
he weakly and deceptively declared that the two-thirds majority necessary was
achieved. After his pronouncement, the boos grew even louder. Such is the state
of today’s Democratic Party.

It is little wonder that a party so hostile to God and His
Word has become an anathema to liberty. True liberty only exists in a society
where God is revered. Our founding documents made this clear when they Declared,
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
them are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Only a culture that operates under the premise that they are
to be free because they were created to be free by a God whose wisdom guides
good government can enjoy true liberty. Libertarians would do well to remember
this as they weigh the “social agenda” of the right against the Big Government
agenda of the left.

In God

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I was born in 1969 to Edsel and Carolyn Thomas and have lived all my life in Northeast Georgia. I've been a follower of Jesus since 1986. I am originally from White County, where I graduated from high school and lived for the first twenty-plus years of my life. (Most of my family and my wife’s family live in White County.) Michelle and I married on January 31, 1998. We have 4 beautiful children (three boys and one girl): Caleb, born 2002; Jesse, born 2004; Caroline born 2006; and Noah born in 2008. We currently reside in the North Hall area. I have a BS degree in physics from the University of North Georgia, an MEd in mathematics education from the University of North Georgia, and an EdS in mathematics education from the University of Georgia. I've been teaching high school mathematics (public and private) since 1993. In 2013 my wife and I published Debt-Free Living in a Debt-Filled World. In 2016 I published The Miracle and Magnificence of America. I have been writing opinion columns since 2001. I have been blogging (though not with my own blog) since 2007. My hobbies include anything that allows me to spend time with my family, and includes action movies, swimming, hunting, fishing, gardening, and maintaining my lawn. I also enjoy most sports that involve a ball, and try (somewhat) hard to not cuss while watching the Georgia Bulldogs, the Atlanta Falcons, Braves, and Hawks, and the Dallas Cowboys.